Unbelievable that you seem to have such a hard calloused view of civilian casualties. Curious: what do you do for a living?
The lies of omission by the US government in reporting any data on civilian casualties tells the real story, in my opinion. Drones are probably the sickest manifestation of the US Department of War. I used to be a defense contractor a few decades ago and was mostly proud of what I did, but what we are doing now it all seems so very wrong.
Hi Mark. I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I have a calloused view towards civilian casualties? I'm really confused by drones. In one camp you could argue that without them there would be a much greater loss of life and more horrors of war. We would still be going after various members of the Taliban in the Afghanistan/Pakistan mountains only now it would be fighter jets and boots on the ground and therefore heavier casualties all round. On the other hand you could say that the ease with which we can now kill our enemies - without the critical downside of the death of our own troops (and the subsequent public opinion swing against war that then follows) has created too few disincentives and resulted in increased and unnecessary deaths. I'm not sure which it is! This headline grabbed me as perhaps by someone who could discuss the positives and negatives of how drones are really being used and I could draw some conclusions. Instead, as others have pointed out too, it offered very little in the way of substance about drones. Instead, it was a broad anti war piece with a lot of emotional imagery which spoke very little about drones and really didn't have any conclusion or point. So I felt like a bait and switch and that I was being lured by a misleading headline (Thus my manipulated theme)
In any case, I fail to see why our government needs to spend as much money as all other countries combined on our military. I don't think we need boots on the ground when there is little real threat to people inside the USA. I am in favor of almost all of our military being redeployed back inside our country.
I saw a statistic last week that bathroom accidents kill 100 times more people in the USA and EU as terrorism.
The fake war on terrorism is just another way to give our tax money to the ultra-rich who do make money on forever wars.
The last statistic I saw was that our military budget was 17x larger than the next on the list - China. Agree that's a pretty wasteful spend vs investing those dollars in education, infrastructure etc at home.
You're argument is a bit silly and childish though. Couldn't your silly statistic be explained by the fact that we do "fight terrorists." I'm not saying it is but logically you leave that pretty wide open.
That said, I do agree that much of the "war on terrorism" has led to huge financial wastes with no practical benefit and even corruption with these large contractors. But I don't think I agree in a fantasy conception of the world in which terrorism, or whatever you want to call it, does not exist.
I believe the statistic hiliting the relatively few deaths from terrorism is valid, and supports my contention is that the USA probably spends an order of magnitude too much fighting terrorism. It is unclear, but I think it is possible that programs like global NSA hoovering and drone attacks in other countries might put us in more danger of terrorist acts.
The lies of omission by the US government in reporting any data on civilian casualties tells the real story, in my opinion. Drones are probably the sickest manifestation of the US Department of War. I used to be a defense contractor a few decades ago and was mostly proud of what I did, but what we are doing now it all seems so very wrong.